The Douglas DC-3 first flew in 1935. It was an airborne workhorse in the Second World War, and more than ninety years on, it still flies in parts of the world.  

I don’t mind admitting, I am a plane geek. The Douglas DC-3 is a beautiful machine and perhaps the affection was born out of sharing my middle name with Mr Douglas, the founder of Douglas Aircraft Manufacturing Company, who I was apparently named after!  It’s an iconic aircraft that made early commercial passenger air travel practical and profitable and has stood the test of time, where these aircraft are still used around the world and often in harsh weather environments. I doubt Donald Douglas would have thought that his DC-3 would still be flying the skies 90 years on, but it is a testament to the simple - by today’s standards - but incredible engineering of its day. Compare this to the complex commercial passenger jets that populate the skies today, the engineering capabilities have become a lot more sophisticated and with that the risk increases to ensure standards are continuously met alongside the pressures of build speed.  

With most of my career spent in underwriting aviation risk, I’ve come to see how intertwined the culture of an organisation is with its success as an organisation, whether that is an operator of aircraft or a manufacturer of one.  

Sometimes a little too close to the risk 

Following a tragic loss of a light aircraft and crew, I went to visit the client with the broker some months after to see how the organisation was getting on. In smaller organisations it often feels like a family and a loss like that can take a while to come to terms with. As our meeting concluded it was clear that the organisation was resilient and was coming out the other side and were thankful for our support to date. 

As we made our way back to the airport, we heard that another accident had occurred with one of the same insured’s other aircraft, thankfully without loss of life or injury. However, it had occurred not far from the coastline and on our route to the airport so we diverted to see if we could offer any assistance.   

It transpired that we could certainly provide help, when on arrival there were already several members of the public trying to overturn an aircraft that was upside down in the water. Over the next hour or so many of us attempted to right the aircraft before the tide went out and it became embedded within the sand. 

On reflection it’s during these moments that you get to know the client and understand the culture of the organisation despite how challenging those situations can be. 

Entering a data driven market  

The market is data driven, but this has only really been a focus in the last few years as we have come out the other side of COVID. We don’t want to repeat the market cycles of the past as this is not good for anyone so we must be smarter about the way we underwrite. At TMK we want to utilise as much quantitative information as possible to make us more informed about the risk we get presented with, to build a fuller picture of the organisation, but that is only one side of analysing risk.  

Understanding the client’s business is also a must because underwriting models and software tools can’t capture the heart of the organisation and the culture that beats within. Therefore, it is imperative that we try to experience that through interaction with clients when visiting London and when underwriters get the opportunity to visit the client’s operations. 

This provides an understanding of the business on the ground and helps to give a sense of the culture, the people, and how the organisation operates. That is fundamental to understanding the risk and how you differentiate one risk from another. 

The single largest driver of aviation loss outcomes is one no dataset captures. Around 75% of aviation accidents involve human factors. Safety culture, operational discipline and whether risk management is embedded in how the business runs, are the real risk drivers that help us provide a sustainable product to our clients.  

From the cockpit to the box  

When I learnt to fly at a young age, most of the training that will get you out of a sticky situation focuses on something going wrong with the aircraft and I would hopefully be able to use that training to get the aircraft safely back on the ground. You never fear the worst and hope for the best as a pilot! The training is designed for you to go through a structured set of checks when operating the aircraft, and in times of emergency, so you don’t think much about how human error could lead to these challenging and often life-threatening situations. That became all too apparent after joining the aviation insurance industry 20 years ago. 

When you start out in aviation insurance, you quickly understand the pilot is often the variable that determines the safety of the aircraft and its operation. Take-off, landing, and difficult weather decisions put that experience to the test. Those risks are the hardest to see from behind a desk.  

I use my experiences of being a pilot to understand the stresses and strains involved in flying, particularly during these critical phases of flight. Part of understanding risk is to understand how quickly situations can change in a cockpit and the pressures pilots are under when making decisions. At the end of the day, it comes back to the culture of that organisation. Whether those pilots are allowed to get complacent based on experience, whether training is at the core, whether it is a high-pressured environment where pilots are pressured into making the wrong decisions, or sadly if safety is not always first. 

The client on the ground  

Reading a business's safety culture is an impossible exercise when you’re in the room meeting the client for the first time. You must spend as much time as you can with your clients to really see under the bonnet of the company. Being able to see the operational specifics that don’t sit in a data feed. You notice how the open and transparent communication is, and whether safety is part of every process in the company.  

A growing operator whose culture has not kept pace with its fleet size is a different risk from a mature operator whose culture, set decades ago, has gone unchallenged for years. Two operators can present identical loss records and still be different risks. An underwriter can see that difference on the ground which a data model cannot.  

The small things matter most. Whether the engineer has the freedom to raise concerns on the product without reprise, or if the first officer can point out to the Captain if they are doing something wrong. Whether the maintenance team pushes back on flight operations. Whether operational shortcuts get called out in the room.  

My first Aviation job as an aircraft flight dispatcher showed me the pressures airlines are under, and where corners can slip without anyone flagging it. Those pressures shape how a business operates, and they rarely appear in a submission.  

That day trying to right the aircraft after the accident didn’t change how I saw the client. Our priority in the moment was to support them. It is often the analysis afterwards or the accident investigation report that shows areas of concern we would never have seen from behind a desk. But even then, we stand by our clients providing solutions to help them get back on track. 

Local expertise 

In London, aviation risk flows through specialist brokers often emanating from brokers around the world that aren’t specialists in aviation. In markets such as Asia, where there are fewer aviation specialists dealing with the risk it is one of the underwriters’ jobs to go out and impart their expertise on the local brokers and insurers. This often puts you closer to the client leading to more opportunities in getting to know the culture behind the risk. 

Having worked in an area like Asia where cultures can be very different compared to Western Europe and North America, you quickly appreciate the positives and negatives that those cultures can bring to an aviation risk.  Being on the ground near your clients, as many Underwriters are in their respective domestic markets, means that you can understand and appreciate the difference in culture, regulation, practices, geopolitical situations, and climate a lot easier.  It is this that clients often appreciate about more ‘local’ underwriters. But sometimes this can be limiting when something unusual crops up and a more ‘global’ perspective is needed. The strongest underwriting often comes from combining local insight with global experience. 

After two decades in aviation insurance, I've learned that the most important risk indicators are rarely found in a spreadsheet. You find them in the cockpit, in the maintenance hangar, in conversations with engineers and pilots, and in how an organisation responds when things go wrong. Data will always be critical to good underwriting, but culture gives you a sense of how people will behave when they are under pressure. In aviation, where human factors remain the largest driver of losses, that understanding can be every bit as important as the numbers.